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Su/ei^ty-tu/o Years ii? 




FRANKLIN CARR 



STATE PPjSOfiS 



1893. 



Twenty-two Years 



IN 



State prisons 



By FRANKLIN CARR. 






smy^y 1 



PHILADELPHIA. 

1893. * ° 






COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY FRANKLIN CARR. 



GAZETTE PRINTING HOUSE, 
CAMDEN, N. J. 



INTRODUCTION, 



The author of this little book has asked me to 
write an introductory word. It must be but a 
word. Its pages tell a tenderly pathetic story of 
sorrow, sin and salvation. They show how a 
child, not naturally worse than other children, 
may be made worse by parental indifference. 
They teach that home is the best " House of 
Refuge," and that reformatory institutions, so- 
called, are sometimes little better than nurseries 
of crime. They indicate that courtesy and kind- 
ness, and not curses and kicks, are the better 
methods of reforming criminals. They bring a 
message of hope to the worst of men ; showing 
that the vilest and most sinful ma) be saved if 
they will but turn to Christ. And last, though 
not least, they show that the humble and obscure, 
as well as the cultured and prominent, may be 



INTRODUCTION. 



made of God the honored instruments in winning 
souls to Christ. May the blessing of God ever 
rest upon the author and accompany the reading 
of his sadly eventful life. 

Yours in gospel bonds, 

REV. JOSEPH B. GRAFF. 

M. E. Parsonage, No. 2039 E. York St., Philadelphia, Pa. 
January 5, 1893. 



Twenty-Two Years 



IN 



STATE PRISONS 



I, Franklin Carr, better known as " Big Frank/' was 
born in New York city on the 16th of February, 1846. 
We moved to Philadelphia, Pa., about one year after I 
was born, where my father was killed on a railroad and 
brought home dead. Of course I was too young to 
realize my loss, and my mother was left a widow with 
me, her only child, to care for. She tried to raise me 
up to be a good Christian and to love God, who could be 
a husband to the widow and a father to the orphan, but 
it seemed that I was born to get into all kinds of 
scrapes, for I got what is known as a step-father, and he 
did not believe in God or the Devil. He did not believe 
much in me, and so my life began to be a miserable one. 
My mother would dress me up nice and clean and send 
me out to play," and would say, "Now, Frankie, be a good 



8 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

boy and don't get your clothes dirty," and I would say, 
"yes, ma'am," but as soon as I got off out of her sight I 
would forget all about my promises and I would go 
after the 'busses and wagons and fall off in the mud in the 
street and get my clothes all dirty and torn, and then my 
step-father would knock me down and beat me unmerci- 
fully. I started out with some other boys to dig a cave, 
and we were to play robbers, but before the cave was 
dug I came to grief. I was moving my little foot along 
to show another boy where to chop the ground with a 
hatchet, but my toe was so full of the same kind of dirt 
that he took it for the ground, and down came the 
hatchet on my toe. The other little fellow took his 
hat in one hand and away he went; I almost can see 
that boy run now as I write this narrative. 

Well, that slopped my play for quite awhile to come. 
My step-father found a school that I could go to for 
the small amount of ten cents a week. The school met 
in a vacant store, and we had two teachers, man and wife ; 
but I never heard anything like a lesson while I was 
there. The principal exercises consisted in laughing at 
the teachers whipping the little girls over the lower 
limbs with the cat-o'nine-tails, and in asking permission 
to go home and get a piece of bread and molasses. And 
so it went on until the schoolmaster and mistress came 
to the school one day so drunk that they could not 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 9 

open the door. Then the parents of the children 
would not send their children there any more, and 
that ended my schooling until I was six years old, when 
I was sent to a public school. The first day I went to 
that school some boy had thrown a spit ball or some- 
thing of that sort, and he had the fun while I got the 
whipping, and the consequence was the teacher and I 
had a fight. She used the rattan while I used the slate, 
and I came out the victor; but I had to fight another 
one when I got home, and the enemy (my step-father, 
who was a powerful man) being much stronger, of 
course I was badly whipped and was laid up for two 
weeks from the effects. My mother was absent at the 
time on a visit to the country. When she came home I 
told her all about it, and that made him so angry that he 
kicked me out into the street. The neighbors were 
afraid to take me in, so I had to sleep in a butcher's 
wagon in a slaughter house and sometimes in packing 
boxes. My mother used to bring me in the house when 
he was away and give me food and money, and after 
three or four months my step-father bound me out with 
a farmer in Montgomery county, who treated me very 
badly. He w T ould get me out of bed when the stars 
were shining in the morning and keep me working as 
long as I could at night, and his wife used to pull my 
hair and shake me so that I got afraid to go near her. 



10 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

Everything her own children did they would blame on 
me, and she was only too willing to believe them. It 
went on in this way till I could stand it no longer, and 
then I ran away from them and came back to the city. 

A short time after this, when I was about seven years 
of age, my mother died. She told them to bring me to 
her, and as I remember standing there at the deathbed 
of my mother, the only friend I had in the world pass- 
ing away from me, I was so dazed I could neither speak, 
cry nor do anything else. I could hardly realize my 
loss ; it was all I could do to understand what she was 
saying to me. I remember her telling me to be a good 
boy and God would take care of me. My step-father 
and a number of others were standing around the bed, 
and as she turned her eyes toward them and said, " Re- 
member my boy Frank, and take care of him, and bring 
him up in the way he should go," they promised her 
they would; but they soon forgot their promises. Some 
four or five weeks after my mother died they placed me 
in a House of Refuge or a Reform School. The Super- 
intendent took me by the hand, and seating himself 
alongside of me, talked very kindly, and told me to tell 
him something about my life, and said he would be my 
friend. He turned out to be a true friend to me, and I 
was placed in the brush shop to work. I was made 
office boy shortly after that, where I received more 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. II 

privilege than most of the boys ; but I found the House 
of Refuge was only a school for crime. When a new 
boy was turned in the yard among four or five hundred 
other boys, they would get around him and ask him what 
he was in there for, and when he would tell them that 
he was put there by his father, or mother, or guardians, 
they would laugh and say, "Is that all? " Of course, it 
would be natural for him to ask them the same question, 
and one would tell how he tapped a till, or, in other 
words, robbed a money drawer, and would show all 
about how it was done. Another would tell how he 
picked pockets; how he had been brought up in a 
school for young pickpockets ; and another would tell 
how his father or brother were crooked men, or, in other 
words, were burglars, and had used him for transom 
work; so that a boy would learn more there in one 
month than he would in five years outside. That was 
the first place I ever learned to pick a lock. We used 
to' pick the locks of the officers' rooms to steal tobacco 
from ; or if a boy got locked up for punishment we 
would unlock his door and let him out again. 

I was at the House of Refuge for a period of three 
years. When I was released I found my step-father had 
married my mother's sister. After I went home they 
treated me very badly. My step-father knocked me 
down and jumped on me until I was bruised so badly I 



12 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

had to be put to bed. Shortly after that I was returned 
to the House of Refuge again, where I spent two years 
and a half more. When I left there again I was home- 
less and friendless; nowhere to go, no one to help me, 
and the only situation that would afford me a home was 
to tend a bar in a gambling saloon, one of the worst at 
that time in the city of Philadelphia. There I became 
acquainted with thieves and gamblers. We never 
closed that place day or night, and as there was no 
Sunday liquor law at that time, of course the place was 
never closed. We had a private entrance "for ladies, " 
at least that is what the sign read over the door on the 
outside. There was a bell rope in every room that rang 
a bell behind the bar, so that we could tell what room 
they were in. I have seen young girls from sixteen to 
eighteen years old, and some that even looked younger 
than that, with their hair down over their faces, and so 
drunk that they had to be taken to their homes in a 
hack early in the morning. And then we had in the back 
part, what is known in bar-rooms as a card room, where 
young men could sit down and gamble for drinks and 
money, and some of those young men were from fif- 
teen to eighteen years old, and about as bright a set of 
boys as you would meet anywhere ; but they soon be- 
gan to show that dissipated and don't-care look. I 
remember one boy that used to come there by the name 



."""-. 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 1 5 

of Harry White. A bright little fellow he was, with 
rosy cheeks, and a smile for every one. He would 
come in with his Sunday school books on a Sunday 
morning, when his parents thought he was in the Sab- 
bath school, and he would say, " Frank, is Sunday 
school commenced ? " and I would answer, "Yes; they 
are up stairs in No. 5 room waiting for their teacher to 
come," and there they would sit all day on the Sabbath 
playing cards and drinking whiskey. In order to do 
this they had to have money, and some of them would 
tell their mother or father that they got less wages than 
they really did get, so that they deceived their parents ; 
and some of them would take small amounts of money 
from time to time from their employers. And many 
times have I had their parents, either a poor old father 
or mother, almost broken-hearted, come looking for 
their boy, and they would say, " Has my boy been here 
to-night ? " and I would answer, " No ; I have not seen 
him to-night," when I knew it was a lie ; but I had to 
lie or lose my place. The boy would probably be lying 
in the back room at the time so drunk that he could not 
get off the chair, or, if lying on the floor, he would not 
be able to stand upon his feet. I have taken them home 
and put them on the steps, and then rung the bell, and 
left them there to be taken in by their parents. Of 
those boys who used to meet in that saloon at that time 



l6 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

one of them died in the insane asylum; another died 
with the delirium tremens, and one committed suicide by 
jumping out of a window while having the delirium 
tremens ; another died with consumption brought on by 
exposure, and two of them went to State Prison. 

I remember one Sunday morning Mr. White was 
standing at the bar when his son Harry stepped in, and 
as he came near the bar he caught sight of his father. 
They stood like two statues looking at each other. 
At last Mr. White spoke, and the first words he said 
were, " How long have you been coming here, my boy?" 
And the son put on a saucy look and answered with a 
toss of his curly head, " How long have you been 
coming here ? " Mr. White did not get angry, but as he 
looked at his son I saw tears flowing down his cheeks. 
He called his son aside, and they had a long talk 
together. At last the father took his son's hand and 
they went out together, and I never saw father or son in 
that saloon again. 

There was one young man who used to come to 
that saloon by the name of Willie Myers. I knew him 
when I was a little fellow going to school, and I remem- 
ber when he went to learn his trade at brass finishing. 
He came into that saloon one day and looked all around 
to see if any one knew him, and when he saw that no 
one knew him he stepped up to the bar and called for a 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 17 

glass of whiskey. After drinking it he commenced 
coughing and strangling, while the tears ran down his 
cheeks. He said, "That is good whiskey." I said, 
" Yes, we don't keep anything but the best of everything 
here." I knew that he was no judge of anything. The 
next time he came in he didn't seem to mind who was 
there so much, and after awhile one glass was not enough ;, 
he wanted more. He married a young girl I also knew/ 
when going to school, and when they were married they 
were as happy a couple as ever you would wish to see. 
They had a nice little house furnished from top to bot- 
tom, but rum broke it up. Some years after this his 
wife came to me on a cold winter's night. She had a 
shawl wrapped around her head and she said, "Frank, I 
want you to come with me quick." When we got to the 
house I found that they lived in an attic. She took a 
candle to light me up the stairs, and when we got in the 
room I looked around, and instead of the fine furniture, I 
found there an old bedstead tied up with ropes to keep 
it from falling, one chair and a block of wood for seats, a 
little round stove and just a square pine table, and that 
was all the furniture there was in the room. Lying on 
the bed was a young man in delirium tremens, and two 
men (one his brother) were holding him down. His 
wife, pointing to the bed, said, "Frank, there is your 
work ; you made him what he is." That was a scene I 
2 



18 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

never could erase from my memory. I would cut off 
my right arm now rather than sell another glass of rum 
over the bar to man, woman or child. 

We had on the second floor of that saloon a gambling 
room. I remember one old gentleman with long white 
hair, over eighty years of age, and who was worth con- 
siderable property. His poor old wife, who was aged and 
infirm, used to stand outside and cry and wring her hands, 
waiting for him to come out ; but he never would go 
out till he had lost every dollar that he carried. I do 
not know what became of him afterwards. That is one 
of the many cases that I have seen ruined in the gam- 
bling saloon. A gambler is no more or less than a thief. 
He will rob you of every cent that you own. If he 
allows you to win ten or fifteen dollars he has a purpose 
for doing so ; but if he thinks there is no more to be got 
from you he will not allow you to win anything. They 
will tell you that faro bank is the fairest game there is 
with cards, but there is a certain working of that little 
silver box whereby a professional gambler can draw out 
a red or black card as he pleases. So you can see that 
you have not a ghost of a chance with a professional 
gambler. Most all gamblers I ever knew learned 
playing cards at home; just a social little game for pas- 
time. Then they would play for pennies to make it 
interesting, and from that went to gambling for a living. 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 1 9 

That was the first I got acquainted with gamblers and 
thieves. There was one in particular that I took a great 
fancy to. He was a great man in my eyes. They called 
him " Captain." He said he would make a good man 
out of me, and told me some great yarns that I would 
have plenty of good clothes, plenty of money and a 
good time of it, and when he took me away from there 
one evening he took me to a house in the lower sec- 
tion of the city where he said I would have a good 
time and the boys would like me; but when I got there 
that house fell in my estimation considerably. Instead 
of them liking me they got to fighting over me. It was 
a small square room with a small table in the middle of 
the floor, and a lot of men sitting around playing cards, 
and a girl sixteen or seventeen years of age filling up the 
glasses with liquor for them to drink. As we came 
through the door they jumped to their feet and wanted 
to know what he brought that boy there for, and they 
soon got to fighting with knives. As I saw the glim- 
mer of the knives in the glare of the lamp I was very 
much frightened; boy-like, I shrank off in a corner for I 
was not so hardened in sin as I afterwards became. The 
captain told them to let me alone ; I had the right stuff in 
me and I would make a good man. So the girl that was 
waiting on them got them quiet again, and one of them 
took hold of me by the collar and pointing a revolver in 



20 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

my face said he wanted me to listen to him ; he said if I 
would ever "squeal" on them in any way he would shoot 
me like a dog. Then he told me to take my seat and 
offered me a glass of whiskey ; I told him I did not 
want it. But he made me drink it, "for," he said, "you 
will want it before morning." About midnight one of 
them said, " Well, Jim, get the tools ready and let us get 
to work." 

I wondered what kind of work they did at that hour 
of the night, but I was not kept long in ignorance. They 
brought the tools out and looked them over, and then 
they asked if he had the jimmy nipps, and if they had 
the lanterns and drills, and a number of other tools too 
numerous to mention. When they were ready they 
buttoned up my overcoat and wrapped a scarf around 
my neck and we were soon on our way out of the city 
on the cars. That was my first lesson in the art of a 
cracksman or a burglar. 

We went into a small town up the State and were 
robbing a mansion, when some one coming home late 
gave the alarm. That was the first time I knew what it 
was to have a howling mob after us. A lot of farmers 
got after us with lanterns, shot guns and pitchforks ; it 
was after a hard rain and the roads were full of mud. I 
ran till I was exhausted and covered with mud and could 
run no longer. I was so frightened I threw myself down 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 21 

by a fence in a corner and for some reason or other they 
passed me by and went after the men. The next morn- 
ing when I got back into the city I was in a sorry plight, 
and had anybody taken an interest in me I believe it 
would have been my last step in crime; but I was left to 
myself and soon got as bad as the rest of them, so much 
so that I had to leave the city and go West. I went out 
into the State of Ohio where I got in with a gang of 
crooks as bad as any I had left behind in Philadelphia. 
There I changed my name and went under the name of 
Bill Pool. I now began to study the business as a pro- 
fession, and was soon known as one of the worst in the 
State. I had joined a gang known as the " Bell Boys." 
There were three of them in the penitentiary at that time, 
and a woman who kept what is known among crooks as 
a "fence" furnished me with a set of burglars' tools, and 
I soon became a terror to that State. I had robbed a 
place up at McCoy station and then cut a boat loose on 
the river and rowed down to Steubenville. Then I set the 
boat adrift and took the steamboat Othello, on my way 
to Wheeling, West Virginia, to commit a crime, but be- 
fore we got there the boat was hailed at Martin's Ferry 
where the authorities came aboard and put my partner 
(a young man by the name of John Hamilton) and me in 
irons. We were taken, by rail, back to Steubenville. I 
waived a hearing at the time so I could hear from my 



22 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

friend and get counsel. Two days after I was bound 
over in $2000 bail to appear at court, and when I came -■ 
up for trial I was four days getting tried. The sheriff 
spoke a good word for me and said I had behaved like a 
gentleman while under his charge in the jail, and when 
the judge told me to stand up for sentence he said, "I 
could give you ten years, but your counsel has pleaded 
so earnestly, and the sheriff has spoken so well of you, 
that I will give you five years in the Ohio penitentiary 
where you will find that the way of the transgressor is 
hard." 

It was announced in the papers that we would be 
taken to the penitentiary the next day, but we were not 
taken for two or three days after. When I got out of 
there I met the sheriff again, and he said he did not ex- 
pect to get us there without a good deal of trouble, for 
he thought some of the gang would attack the train 
somewhere along the road, and that was the reason we 
did not go up as advertised. 

When I got in that prison I did find that the way of 
the transgressor was hard. They took me into one of 
the cell-houses, and there we found a guard who told us 
to take a seat. I tried to speak to him, but he told me 
to keep my mouth shut until I was spoken to. Then 
he took a card from his desk about two feet long and 
about ten inches wide, and when he read it to me I found 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 23 

I was not to talk, laugh, wink, look at visitors or the 
other prisoners, or do anything but what I was told to do. 
I found that the least infringement of these rules brought 
a ducking in the tub until one was almost drowned. I 
was taken from the cell-house to the bath-room and put 
under the shower bath, and my own clothes taken away 
and a striped convict suit handed to me to put on. Then 
I was marched over to the chapel, which was called the 
idle room, where we had to sit in rows through the week, 
and were not allowed to speak a word to those along- 
side of us. There was a guard to watch us that we 
should not talk, and woe unto the one that was caught 
moving his lips. 

The next day I was placed in one of the foundries to 
work. I was marched up in company with about thirty- 
five other men in lock step, with the right hand on 
the shoulder of the man in front of me. We all had to 
keep our faces turned to the left so the guard could see 
if w r e talked, and they would shout, "Don't let me see 
daylight between you." When the first bell would ring 
the company would all march up into the yard, and at 
the second bell we would march into the dining-room 
and stand in front of our places until the third bell, when 
we would take our seats. Then they would ring a small 
bell in the dining-room when we would take off our 
caps and the chaplain would say grace. I looked at 



24 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

the food, but could not eat any; it consisted of a piece of 
corn bread, a bowl of water and a spoonful of hominy. 
I saw that the man next to me looked hungry enough 
to eat it, but I could not say, " You can have it," without 
first raising my hand, which I did. Then the guard 
came down to me and wanted to know what I wanted, 
and when I asked him if I could give my dinner to the 
man next to me, he said yes, but that I had better eat 
my own dinner. I told him that I could not; and then 
I could not say, "you can have this dinner;" all I could 
do was to push it over to him. I wish some of my 
readers could have seen that man eat the dinner. It was 
gone before I thought he had time to commence; I found 
I could eat it, too, before I got out, for we did not get 
half enough to eat, such as it was. I have seen men sit 
down in the foundry and cry because they were tasked so 
hard and .were so hungry that they could not do their task, 
and I said if I ever live to get out of here I will never get 
in prison again; but when I got out of prison I never 
found any Christian who would take me by the hand and 
say, " Frank, come, go along with me and I will show 
you a better way toiive," or, "we will get you a situation 
so that you can earn an honest living." But the devil 
always had his agents outside to wait for me, and they 
would say, "Well, Frank, old boy; I am glad to see you 
out again. Let's go over and have something," and 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 25 

" something- " always meant a glass of whiskey. Then I 
would drift back into the old life of sin and crime. 

The prison in which I was confined is built on the 
Scioto river, at Columbus, Ohio. When I got out of it 
(there were seven of us released the same morning, and 
two companions that I met outside, making nine of us 
all together) we went over to a Columbus saloon and had 
a drink, and then bought some things to send to the 
prisoners inside, such as handkerchiefs, tobacco, etc. 
Then we went and bought our tickets for Cincinnati, and 
as we had plenty of rum on board we soon got in high 
spirits and came near having a fight before we got there. 
After we got to Cincinnati we split up and I and my 
companions crossed the Ohio river to Newport, Kentucky, 
and from there we went to Louisville, Kentucky. We 
stayed there about a week, going to the theaters, gam- 
bling and committing all kinds of crime. Then we 
crossed the river to Jeffersonville, Indiana, and visited the 
State Prison, and then on to Indianapolis, where I met a 
young man who gave me a tract and invited me up to a 
meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association. I 
said I would go if he would go with me. "All right, 
Frank," he said, " I will go with you." I was so aston- 
ished to hear him call me by name, I asked him if he 
knew who I was. He said, "yes." Then he had a long 
talk with me, and asked me to promise not to steal any 



26 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

more. I told him I would not promise him. He said 
he did not want me to promise him but to promise God. 
I told him I would promise him I would not steal any- 
thing in Indianapolis, and I kept my word, for I never 
did rob a place in that town. 

I went from there to Terra Haute, Indiana, and from 
there to St. Louis, committing crimes all the time. I 
took a ramble around the city; around Christy avenue 
and the vilest portions. Then I went up to the "four 
courts," then along the levee and visited some of the 
worst dives that can be found in any city. They were 
called the " Blazing Stump," the " Hole in the Wall," and 
such names. I will try to describe one of them called 
the " Blazing Stump." When I went in at the door all 
eyes were turned on me. One dirty looking individual 
put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Say, pard, ain't 
you going to treat?" I shook his hand from my shoulder 
and told him not to get so familiar; I then called all hands 
up to the bar and treated them, and then had a chance to 
look around me. There was a dirty looking man and a 
boy behind the bar, and I think there was a woman 
there, too. The floor was black with dirt; it looked as 
if it had never been scrubbed. Afterwards I turned my 
attention to those around me, and found the hardest 
looking lot I ever met. There were 'longshoremen who 
unload the steamboats, and bums and tramps, and petty 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 27 

sneak . thieves. There were black and white men, and 
there were some that looked as if they had seen better 
days. Some were literally covered with vermin. The 
customers could get a bowl of soup and a piece of bread 
for the small sum of five cents, and they had all kinds of 
things to sell that they either stole or begged some- 
where. One would say, " Cap, don't you want to buy a 
good coat, or pants or vest?" and another would have a 
ring or a watch to sell that had been stolen somewhere, 
and I noticed that while I was there a policeman 
looked in several times as though he was looking for 
some one. I treated again and then went out, for the 
smell of the place made me sick. I went up to the hotel 
and had something to eat, and the next day I was so 
sick I thought I would die. I found that everybody 
avoided me, and I did not know r what was the matter, so 
I went to see a doctor. He looked at me as if I was 
some ghost that came to haunt him, and told me to go 
up to the guardians of the poor. I went there and the 
doctor talked very kindly to me and asked me how I felt. 
Then he took me through a window onto a porch and 
told me to sit there until he came to see me again ; and 
he kept me there from about ten o'clock in the morning 
until about half-past three in the afternoon. When he 
came to me again he asked me how I felt, and I told him 
that I did not feel any better for sitting there; and he 



28 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

said, " I suppose not, but you have all the symptoms of 
small pox." I told him I hadn't the small pox, and he 
said, " I know you have not now." In a few minutes I 
was put in an ambulance and taken to the depot and 
put on a train and sent to Carondelet to the City Hos- 
pital, where I was treated very kindly. I found that I 
had the ague and intermittent fever and came very near 
dying that time; but I got so tired of the hospital that I 
came out before I was well, although the doctor tried to 
persuade me to stay until I got a little stronger. 

I came back to St. Louis from the hospital and visited 
what is known as the Soup House. I had heard so 
much about it in the hospital, I was anxious to see it. It 
was situated in the neighborhood of Eleventh and Chest- 
nut streets, and when I got there I found it had been a 
large tobacco warehouse. A policeman was standing at 
the door and I asked him if I could go in and see the 
place. He very kindly took me in to show me around. 
The first thing I saw was a square-shaped place boarded 
off, something like a counter, and behind it were a num- 
ber of ladies with a lot of soup boilers. They were 
handing soup in large tin cups to the men. I noticed 
also along the walls were wooden bunks for the men to 
lay in at night, row on top of row. After staying there 
awhile and looking around, I thanked them very kindly 
and bid them good-bye. That night I went to Jack 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 29 

Rooney's variety show and after drinking plenty of beer 
and whiskey, I went back to the hotel. 

The next day I took passage for New Orleans. While 
on the boat I made a new acquaintance, a very flashily 
dressed young man who seemed very attentive to me. 
He asked me to have a cigar and then commenced to ask 
me a great many questions as to where I came from, and 
invited me to take a drink down in "the saloon. After 
drinking he asked me over to see them play cards. Then 
he asked me if I would like to take a hand that we might 
win some money. I saw into the game right away; I 
saw that they were all in one ring. I told them I did not 
know much about playing cards but would take a hand 
in it. I had not forgotten the old trade I had learned 
while tending bar in a Philadelphia gambling saloon. 
The consequence was I came out of that game with over 
$500. I got up and walked over to the other end of the 
boat and sat down by myself, thinking over my past life 
and wondering what it would come to. When I landed 
in New Orleans I went up Canal street and went into a 
gambling saloon where I lost about $25. I then went 
around to the French market and got something to eat; 
then back to the gambling saloon again, and when I left 
there that night I was over $200 ahead. As I was leav- 
ing the place a young man tapped me on the shoulder 
(it was the young man I met on the steamboat) and 



30 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

asked me to take a walk around town. I felt in my 
pocket to see if my revolver was all right. He noticed 
the motion and smiled and told me I had no use for that. 
After we got outside he said, "who in the world are you, 
anyhow?" I told him I was only a stranger, looking at 
the sights and to see the "elephant." After strolling 
around that night we went to a hotel to sleep. From 
that time we became fast friends. 

I now commenced my life as a gambler on the Mis- 
sissippi river, making St. Louis my headquarters. We 
would gamble from St. Louis to Memphis, Cairo and New 
Orleans, and back again. I kept up this life for some 
time until I was run off the boat as a gambler and a 
blackleg, and as a nuisance generally. Then I went to 
gambling on the railroad, going up one road and down 
another until we were run off the railroads. 

One day while walking out Carondelet avenue I met 
two friends who said they had a job up the State and 
wanted me to help them. We went up the State of 
Missouri about two hundred miles, and came very near 
never coming back again, for we were caught by a 
vigilance committee and came very near being lynched. 
In fact, we would have been if it had not been for the 
sheriff who rescued us from mob law by gathering a 
posse of deputies. Then they put us in jail and placed 
a strong guard around us, not that they were afraid we 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 33 

would escape, but that they wanted to keep them from 
molesting us. When we were brought "up in court the 
judge gave us five years in the Missouri State Peniten- 
tiary. The prison was built upon a high bluff alongside 
of Jefferson City; and below the prison was the quarry. 
Below that was the Missouri Pacific railroad, along; 
which the guards were stationed, armed with guns, to 
see that we did not escape. Below the railroad ran the" 
Missouri river, the swiftest river in the world, which 
would carry a man ten or twelve miles down stream 
before he could reach the other side. I came to the 
conclusion that I would have to stay my time out in that 
prison. In addition to the force already mentioned, any 
citizen would arrest a convict who tried to escape, hunt- 
ing him down with dogs and guns, and he would be 
well nigh perished when brought back. When I entered 
the prison they asked me what I did for a living. I did 
not like to say I did nothing but steal, so I told them I 
was a bartender. They said I was just the man they 
wanted to tend bar. I did not know what they meant at 
the time, but the next day he put me in the quarry, and 
put a large iron crowbar in my hand, and told me to 
attend to that. Not being used to that kind of a bar, I 
soon had my hands full of blisters. 

When I got out of that prison I went away with the 
intention of doing better. I thought as I had not made 
3 



34 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

a good citizen I would perhaps make a better soldier, so 
I went to Leavenworth, Kansas, and enlisted in the reg- 
ular army. I was sent from there to Fort Larned, and I 
found that the devil was just as strong in the army as 
in citizen life, for I was in the guard house most of my 
time for being drunk and fighting. One day I went on 
a pass to a town seven miles and a half from the fort, and 
staying over my pass, was put in the guard house for 
absence without leave. The next morning at guard 
mount, when the officer of the day called my name, I did 
not answer quickly enough to suit him, so he struck me 
with his sword and called me a name I would not take 
from any man at that time, and the consequence was I 
knocked him down for it, and was court martialed and 
sentenced to carry a thirty-six pound ball and a six foot 
chain riveted to the left ankle for three years. General 
Pope reduced the term to one year, and I carried that 
ball two months before court martialed and one year 
afterward. I had to work with it from sunrise to sun- 
set, in the hot sun, and sleep with it all night ; had to 
cut wood for the officers' quarters, and when they didn't 
want any wood cut I had to dig a hole and then turn 
around and fill it up again. After serving my term in 
the guard house (I was then in Fort Dodge with my 
company) I was discharged for disability. 

I then went to Denver, Colorado, and joined a gang of 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 35 

gamblers and desperadoes. I went from there over the 
Denver Pacific to Cheyenne and stayed there awhile, 
gambling and stealing. I then went over towards Fort 
Fetterman, and came very near being caught for stealing 
horses by the Vigilance Committee. I then came back' 
to Cheyenne and took the Union Pacific railroad to 
Ogden. I then took a trip down into Salt Lake City to 
pay the Mormons a visit, and while there I went up to 
Camp Jackson to see the soldiers. The fort is built on a 
bluff a short distance outside of the city. After staying 
there a few days I came back to Ogden. Then I went to 
San Francisco, Cal. I stayed there quite a while and 
went out as far as La Pass Louer, Cal, I visited several 
places, Oakland, Brooklyn, San Sylito and Sacramento, 
and other towns too numerous to mention. I afterwards 
left there and came East as far as Omaha, Nebraska. I 
afterwards went West to Sydney, Nebraska, where I 
enlisted again in the regular army,, where we had to 
escort bull trains from Sydney to fort Red Cloud 
Agency. After a few months of that kind of duty we 
were shipped on a train to Medicine Bow, where we met 
some more troops, and, after camping there two days, 
went to Fort Fetterman, where we met some more troops 
on the North Platte river. After camping there awhile 
the government gave us seal skin caps, gloves and arctic 
shoes, the weather was so severe. Then we were 



36 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

marched from there to Fort Reno, on the Powder River. 
After camping outside the foit for a few days we were 
paid off, and the soldiers spent all their time in gambling. 
After we left there we had a hard time of it. Our rations 
ran out and they could get none up to us. We had a 
supply camp at Crazy Woman's Fork. We were marched 
up into the Big Horn mountains. While there we had 
a fight with the Indians, and that is where I lost my 
finger. After marching around that country from 
November until February, the weather was so severe that 
we were ordered in. We came into Camp Carlon, just 
outside of Cheyenne, where they put us on a train over 
the Denver Pacific road. When we got to Denver the 
train was side-tracked, and we laid there all night. The 
next morning we were sent over the Kansas Pacific road, 
and at some of the watering places the plugs were frozen 
up, so we had to lay over for hours trying to get water 
for the engines. When we got to Fort Leavenworth it 
was about midnight, and we were a sorry looking lot of 
men. One of the companies that was stationed there 
furnished us with hot coffee. After that I was discharged 
from the army again. In a little while I was sentenced 
for three years in the Kansas State Penitentiary. 

After leaving that prison I was determined to reform, 
so I went back to Philadelphia. Had any one taken me 
in hand I would have been changed, for I was tired of 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 37 

the life I was leading and was willing enough to give it 
up ; but I did not know how to go about it. I did not 
think Jesus would have anything to do with men like 
me that had led such wicked lives, so I went down 
again among my old companions, where I was sure of a 
welcome. They gave me a shake of the hand, asked me 
how things were out West, and told me they were glad 
to see me again, as they had a job to do up the State. 
When I told them I had given up the business and in- 
tended to lead a better life, they said I felt out of sorts ; 
to take a good drink and I would be all right. I did so, 
and guess I must have got crazy, for liquor always made 
me wild. We went up in the coal regions and committed 
several burglaries until we reached Scranton, Pa. We 
robbed a place, and no one saw us but God, but it seems 
that I left an impression on paper of my left hand (the 
hand from which the finger was lost) and the detectives 
knew who committed that crime. The papers published 
the facts and I was caught. If you had been there the 
morning I was brought back on the cars, you would 
have thought it was a holiday. What was it for? To 
see a poor man driven along the streets with handcuffs 
on his hands. The policemen threatened to club me 
for telling the people to get out of the way so I could 
walk. 

After they took my photograph they put me in jail, 



38 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

and, after two months' time, I was sentenced to solitary 
confinement at hard labor for seven years. As I had a 
good deal of the devil in me, and would not work, I was 
often put on bread and water and confined in a cell with 
nothing but the bare floor to sleep on. After my release 
I got a situation on the Philadelphia and Reading rail- 
road, and served the company faithfully. One day, after 
I came in from a trip, I was told to report at the office. 
I could not think of anything wrong I had done, but 
when I went in the office they told me my services were 
no longer required. When I asked the reason they 
would give me none ; but some time afterwards I learned 
that detectives had gone there and told them they had 
an ex-convict in their employ. 

Then I got a place on Arch street to work and got 
along pretty well. This man trusted me to collect bills,, 
pay bills, and sometimes buy goods. One day when I 
came in the son told me his father wanted me in his 
private office. When I went in he turned the key in the 
door and told me to sit down. Then he said I was no 
longer needed. I asked for a reason, and he said as far 
as my work went I had done as well as any one he 
ever had, but he heard something that day of my past 
life, and he had no further use for such a man as I had 
been. 

Well, I did not know what to do. The devil told me 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 41 

respectable people did not want such as me around them 
and it was no use trying any more. So I went to the 
rum shop to drown my sorrow. I got drunk and went 
down to my old companions. "Ah ! " they said, " Frank, 
we knew you would be back again, for those Christian 
hypocrites and long-faces do not want anything to do 
with us except to put us in prison." 

I believed what they said, for it seemed only too true 
from what I had seen of them, and it was not long be- 
fore I was sent back to the Eastern Penitentiary for two 
years more, along with another young man whom I had 
known for years. Most of those last two years I laid 
on the sick-bed with hemorrhages of the lungs, never 
expecting to get out of there alive. 

When I got out, in the middle of winter, hardly able 
to walk, I met two of my old chums outside of the 
gate who knew that my time would be up that morning, 
and had come out to meet me, and they said, "Well, 
Frank, old boy; we are glad to see you out again, but 
you look as if you came out of a graveyard." So they 
asked me over to take a drink, and when I told them I 
did not want it, they said it would be the best medicine I 
could take for a man as sick as I was. So I went with 
them, and the first day out of prison I got drunk again, 
as sick as I was. I had promised to meet them the next 



42 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

day, but before I could meet them I was standing on the 
corner of Eighth and Vine streets, where I met a young 
man by the name of William H. Evans, who had been a 
Christian for some time. 

So ends the dark side of my life. 



TWENTY- TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 43 



5l?e Bri^t Side of Cife. 



This young man, whom I met at the corner of Eighth 
and Vine streets, by the name of William H. Evans, was 
a Christian. He took me by the hand and said he was 
glad to see me, and asked me to go with him. He said 
his wife would be glad to see me, as she had not seen 
me for some time. I tried to put him off, saying I had 
to meet a couple of friends ; but he insisted that I 
should go with him, saying that those kind - of friends 
were never any good to me. At last I consented to go 
with him. After we had dinner and sat talking awhile, I 
said, Well, good-bye, Willie; I will come and see you 
again. He asked me where I was going, and I told him 
I thought I w r ould go up to Eighth and Vine a little 
while. He said he would take a walk up that w 7 ay with 
me. 

So we started out together, and he never lost sight of 
me until evening. Then he said I had better go and 
take supper with him, but I told him I w r ould sooner go 



44 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

and take supper with my old friend, Mr. John A. Clay- 
ton, who had been more than a brother to me ; he was 
my little playmate when I was six years of age, and who 
stuck to me when everybody else seemed to turn their 
backs on me. When I was in prison he would write to 
me and bring me anything that I was allowed to have, 
and I have lived with him ever since I have been out of 
prison. But Willie said I was too weak to walk down 
there for supper, and that I had better go and take 
supper with him. 

After we had supper I bade him good-night, and he 
said, " Where are you going to-night? " I said I thought 
I would go to one of the theatres, so he said he would 
take a walk up that way with me. We walked about in 
the neighborhood of Eighth and Vine streets until we 
heard singing at a corner that used to be a saloon when I 
went to prison. It had since been converted into a mis- 
sion. Willie Evans said to me : " Let us go in there 
awhile and hear them sing, and we can rest ourselves." 
We sat right in front of the superintendent, wmose 
name was James Johnson, or, as they called him, Jimmy 
Johnson. He was telling how thieves and drunkards 
had been saved in the Jerry McAuley Mission in New 
York city, and I thought to myself, Can this be true that 
such bad men had been saved ? It seemed to me that 
he was talking directly to me; and when they gave the 



TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 47 

invitation to raise the hand for the prayers of those good 
people, I looked around me and saw that those people 
had what I did not have, and I felt I would like to live 
a better life, if I could. 

Willie told me to raise my hand, and I told him it was 
no use for me to do so. He told me it would do me no 
harm if it did no good, and then I raised my hand. It 
was not long before two or three of them got around 
me and told me that Jesus loved me ; and I told them 
that they did not know how bad I had been. Then 
they told me it did not make any difference how bad 
I had been, and one lady invited me to go into the 
inquiry room. After a little hesitation, I got up and 
walked back in the room, and she talked to me and told 
me about Jesus and the story of the cross, and how He 
saved the thief in the last hour; and she told me what 
He did for the thief over eighteen hundred years ago 
He could do for the thief to-day. She said a good many 
other things about Jesus that I do not remember just 
now, but she told me to get on my knees and pray that 
Jesus would save me. I said I do not know how to 
pray, and then she said, " I will teach you how to pray." 
I stayed on my knees until nearly twelve o'clock that 
night, and then I went to the place where I was stopping 
and got on my knees again and stayed there until 
between two and three o'clock in the morning, when 



48 TWENTY-TWO YEARS IN STATE PRISONS. 

I felt as if a heavy burden had rolled JorT of me, and 
I felt like shouting for joy, for I knew that the Lord had 
heard my cry for mercy. 

That was two years ago, and the Lordjhas taken care 
of me ever since. I have been going about from one 
church to another, and from one mission tojanother, tell- 
ing what a wonderful Saviour I have found and speaking 
to those that were down in the gutter of sin and crime 
where I myself had been. I have known men to raise 
their hands for prayer just to get into the inquiry room 
to coax me out to take a drink, and they have even stood 
outside of the door and poked a bottle of whiskey under 
my nose to tempt me back into the. world again, and I 
have had the detectives follow me around day after day, 
and at last they arrested me for robbing a safe on Arch 
street that I did not know anything about, but God raised 
up good friends for me and brought me through all 
right, for I knew it would be easy to sentence me on my 
previous bad character and circumstantial evidence. 

Since I have been preaching and telling others the 
story of the cross, the Lord has blessed me wonderfully. 

I remain, your brother in Christ, 

FRANKLIN CARR. 

Philadelphia , Pa., January 5, i8pj. 

548 , - 



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